I’m trying to write this piece on Adbusters positioning it as a life style magazine- which, to me, it is… I’m struggling with where I want to take it though… Basically, here’s the introduction:

“Adbusters is a lifestyle magazine whose design provides individuals with subjectivities prone to passivity and empty contentment. This runs contrary to the magazine’s overt appeal as an empowering alternative information source aimed at critiquing issues and imparting knowledge to its readership. Adbusters is a placenta on which those on the political left nourish while existing in a womb of increasing neoliberalism and like a fetus, the left desires not to break free; but, rather to maintain an innocuous position awash in a sea of thoughts so banal they may as well be nothing.“

Points I want to hit include the inevitable co-opting of subversive forces and the pointlessness of “culture jamming”- based upon the notion that the culture one wishes to jam isn’t owned and therefore under others’ control… such that jamming a culture relegates one to that of a gnat or fruit fly or some other common, simple inconsequential and easily squashed nuisance.

What do I recommend? Like everyone else, that’s a question I find hard to answer. Ultimately, it seems the older I get the more I- not change perspective- rather, adopt the concept that one has to WAIT… and that’s all one can do. Wait and see… I do think “things” will get “worse” though… which will perhaps provide fertile ground for positive change.

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Update:

Adbusters organized this Occupy Wall Street action which occurred over this past weekend and during the course of this week, 23 Sep 2011. Activist set up encampments on Wall Street in response to these past few years of financial breakdowns and government bailouts… The occupation is supposed to last indefinitely…

There’s just something about the current (which is really a re-edification of the recent past) form of protest / activism that sits wrongly with me… Its almost like protesting has become a lifestyle (defined loosely as an individual choice of existing within a framework for personal satisfaction) rather than a necessity based upon violated morals or ethics which extend outwards…